“Ground control to Major Tom?”
Someone tell Bowie there’s a new, Copper-coloured Cosmonaut in town. This interstellar space-miner is busy digging up precious resources, selling our uncut gems for profit, and wrangling mechanical arachnids – all of which are possible in Wall World 2, the amazing new indie bombshell. Developed and published by the independent team at Alawar entertainment — the minds behind Security 51 and The Last Gas Station — comes this absolute gem of a game. As the name indicates, Wall World 2 is the direct successor to their innovative rogue-lite mining marvel.
This title rocked my world with the ambition and uniqueness that the developers have so lovingly brought to life. As soon as you turn it on, you can see the passion oozing out of the screen like a British crumpet leaking full-fat salted butter. Take the art style for instance: it’s picture-perfect, with every pixel strategically placed to add nuance and character to every scene. It sounds strange, but it felt like food for my eyes — and they had an insatiable hunger. Then you have the polarising rouge-lite gameplay. Sometimes it’s fantastic. Other times, after a long shift at work when you’ve got tired, bloodshot eyes and you can hear your pillow calling, it can get super frustrating. But truthfully, this tension is where Wall World 2’s brilliance lies.
Mechanical Arachnids
The game consists of three different segments. First, you have the “mechanical arachnid” stages — or thats what I like to call them anyway. Here, you control a spider-shaped fuselage and must defend your perilous location from mischievous, bee-like robots and ebony-coloured tentacles. They scrape and claw at your every move while you try to manoeuvre out of every panic-inducing predicament.
Luckily, your spider ship is not unarmed. You have a handy cannon to fire mercilessly at every swine that comes your way, though you can also just try to crawl out the way like a half-dead, wounded squirrel.
Honestly, these stages really show off the uniqueness in Wall World 2. The whole map is centred on the vertical Y-axis. At first, this can be as jarring as looking though a trippy kaleidoscope while trying to park your car between a Lidl shopping trolley and a rusted Ford Focus. But I genuinely love this choice. It makes the game stand out among the thousands of titles released every year.
Secondly, we have the stages where you will spend most of your spelunking time. Here, you take the role of the main protagonist: boring old Ben. He’s a colourful cosmonaut armed with a powerful sci-fi plasma tool that works as as a drill or stone-sucker-upper — honestly, it’s probably easier just to call it a vacuum from here on out. Ben is also adorned in a corn-coloured spacesuit, which I must say is very trendy.
Your goal is mining a procedurally generated landscape in search of valuable resources and shiny, uncut gems. You will use these as currency to satisfy your oniomaniac needs via a massive upgrade system. These upgrades range from basic improvements like movement speed and drill efficiency, all the way to sexy space boots and a dangerous drill named the “Honey Badger”. But be warned: there are only so many items you can carry before you must return to your home-away-from-home, the armoured Shelob.
Thirdly, we have the cyberpunk-esque town. This is where you can purchase essential upgrades or just get a nice bit of relaxing respite from the arduous, perilous spelunking you’ve been enduring. It’s time to kick back with a hairy, hippie bartender who looks like he’s come straight from a 1972 Grateful Dead concert. After some idle chat, prepare to sink some arbitrarily named beverages. There is the “Acid Shot” which sounds needlessly dangerous to me, or my personal favourite, the “Rusty Ale”. All of these delectable drinks give perks to old Ben. When he’s tired of drowning his sorrows with washed up hippies, there are a couple of other locations you can visit throughout the town. As enjoyable as this luscious landscape is, it mainly serves as the game’s central hub. It is accessible from the vast overworld in which your odyssey takes place, allowing you to unlock and access all the different areas of the map.
So, where are we at with all this? Honestly, Wall world 2 has a great pixelated art style, and the gameplay feels perfectly polished. It is as addictive as a tube of Pringles —meaning once you pop, you really can’t stop. For all the reasons I’ve mentioned above, plus the relaxing, ambient space-age soundtrack, I give this game 8 out of 10. Frankly, it is an absolute joy to play. The only thing I could find wrong with this indie piece of digital art was … honestly, the name. There must have been something else they could have called it. When you play the game, the title makes sense, but for some reason, I kept on getting the words jumbled up. I’d call it World Wall 2 or Wall Word, or even Word War. I don’t know, honestly — this is probably more down to me being a half-brain-dead, slightly chemically damaged individual, but I felt like the developers could have of come up with something a little bit catchier.
At this point, though, I’m just splitting hairs. The last thing I can say for this amazing title is: this is one small game for man, one giant leap for indie gamers!
+ Controls like a dream
+ Beautiful art style
+ Hours of gameplay
+ Mechanical arachnids
+ Procedurally generated landscape
-The confusing name
8 / 10
